For me it started with having to write unit tests and acceptance tests and integration tests for the stuff I make.
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Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
21–30 of 367 posts
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#22It's right there in your first three words, it didn't change so much as you, "grew up".
It doesn't have to be technology, you could probably say the same thing about most things in your life, "I don't know what happened. I used to like hanging out with my friends, riding my bike, listening to music. But then things changed and now I've got a job, a mortgage to worry about and it's all about money and I never have enough time to do the things that I want to do".
But you have an internal contradiction. You're nostalgically looking back at a time when you optimistically said, "Wherever I looked at the world's problems, more technology seemed to be the answer" but then say that, "Today's startups are solving the most boring problems imaginable.".
More technology is not the answer to most problems and most problems are boring.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#23Its always been, you're just realizing it as part of maturing and understanding the world. Technology cannot solve people problems the same way that some silly agile ticketing software isn't going to fix some broken company culture.
There were many silly startups in the late 90's/early 00's. Even the commonly sought after employers of FAANG aren't doing revolutionary things, their cash cows: advertising (F), giant ecommerce store (Amzn), makes phones/tablets/laptops & sells digital stuff (Apple), streaming video (Netflix), advertising (Google). Any cool tech coming out of those companies is mostly driven by them scaling the above named revenue pipelines to the Nth degree.
One could have solid arguments that many things tech has done have made things worse. Is tech/software eating the world driving a bigger divide between the 1% and poor people? You gotta admit tech contributes to that. If someone wanted to run a propaganda campaign about topic X, isn't social media the perfect platform to do it? You can reach millions upon millions of people with a few clicks of clever copy-writing to push an agenda. You can even target them directly.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#24As a similar millennial geek who has been making some of the gadgets for the past few year, I still get wicked excited about new gadgets. The complexity and beauty inside is still magic to me. When a prototype comes in, I love looking at the insides and thinking about how much people are gonna love this thing. No me though, since it’s currently a huge garbage fire and nothing works :)
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#25The appearance of "smartphones" and Facebook killed the cool for me. That, and hearing tech-illiterate morons extol web 2.0 with tireless aplomb. It was sometime in 2008.
feel like that time was closer to a golden age if anything
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#26It's an age thing - the dreams you had when you were younger didn't turn into reality - dreams usually don't. Or at least, not as you expect it. Tech is still really cool, compared to decades ago. But we have so much of it and it is everywhere, that we re-calibrate and think that all this amazing, cool tech is boring. You can get a 3D printer for a few hundred bucks, build it yourself, build a better 3d printer, get…
To your point about 3D printing and robots, we haven’t really moved the needle that much. We’ve made it easy for anyone to print a “cool” robot, sure, but it isn’t necessarily a _useful_ one.
As a former “maker” and electronics hack I think lot of maker stuff has devolved into “cool” stuff that consists of wire hangers and servos with RGB lighting and very little actual value. But coolness doesn’t really mean much when everything is hyped as such.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#27To be blunt, the change is in you and not in "tech". It correlates with you becoming an adult, and your perspective on technology and society changing.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#28* Today's heavily publicised, heavily shared startups solve boring problems.
You're only looking at the surface.
This kind of boring stuff has always been around. As has the pursuit of money and the use of tech in that pursuit.
Tech is more accessible now, and thus you will naturally get more noise.
It does not follow that there are fewer signals, just more noise to filter out.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#29The iPhone and Android are such impressive tools and so many people have them. Having a super computer in your pocket is the norm. There is more compute power in the average person’s pocket than IBM had onboard the Saturn 5 rocket. It’s just part of life! The norm. We’ve adjusted and adapted (sort of). Advancements beyond what we have today are hard to fathom for most folks but also expected.
Re: Ask HN: When did tech stop being cool?
#30well people hate 'techies' in San Francisco because they are thought of as transplants wearing northface invading the culture or whatever, also they are seen as the sole source of raising rents and overall gentrification of the bay area. I guess they are seen as unworthy and their jobs just give them tons of money and they dont contribute.
In Mexico/Colombia/South America people are both envious and hate tech nomads, mostly because they have high salaries and can seemingly do whatever they want and afford it all.
I think the association with wealth and marginal taste is the reason people dont like people who work in tech.
When it started was the second tech bubble in silicon valley bay area and the rise of 'digital nomads', alot of it is warranted and alot of it is jealousy.